Conspiracy theory of the week

Did Muller, when head of the FBI, target the wrong man (and their harassment drive him to psychotic depression and suicide) over the anthrax letters? the LATimes makes it sound like when the first suspect sued them, they quickly chose a different scientist, who had conveniently committed suicide, as their scapegoat.

This is part of an LATimes article.

Lots of articles on line about the controversy among scientists over the FBI's conclusions, but the long Wikipedia article has the details of the technicalities, enough for you CSI fans to figure out.

But the problem is that Anthrax spores clump together, and have to be treated to be small enough to cause pulmonary problems: Larger particles either fall to the floor, or are filtered out by the nose and mouth.

That is why skin and Gastrointestinal anthrax is more common.

And as one of my patients told me: If they want anthrax, just come to my barnyard and dig (spores can survive in the ground for 50years).

Like a lot of scientists, I wonder why the case was made against a scientist with expertise in anthrax, but no expertise in the technical details of weaponizing spores.

The Wikipedia article has details.

but this was new to me:

An official of the U.S. administration said in March 2010 that President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it called for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, as such an investigation "would undermine public confidence" in an FBI probe.^[158] In a letter to congressional leaders, Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget at the time, wrote that an investigation would be "duplicative", and expressed concern about the appearance and precedent involved when Congress commissions an agency Inspector General to replicate a criminal investigation,

yes: no criticism please. We are the FBI....

Wired article (2011) on the investigation.

Even agent Edward Montooth, who ran the FBI’s hunt for the anthrax killer, says that—while he’s still convinced Ivins was the mailer—he’s unsure of many things, from Ivins’ motivation to when he brewed up the lethal spores. “We still have a difficult time nailing down the time frame,” he says. “We don’t know when he made or dried the spores.” In other words, it’s been 10 years since the deadliest biological terror attack in US history launched a manhunt that ruined one scientist’s reputation and saw a second driven to suicide, yet nagging problems remain. Problems that add up to an unsettling reality: Despite the FBI’s assurances, it’s not at all certain that the government could have ever convicted Ivins of a crime.

and key point of the huge hole in the case:

This raises another significant problem with the case. USAMRIID veterans debate whether Ivins had access to the kind of gear required to dry and mill the spores. Even if he did, some argue, he wouldn’t have known how to use it. Ivins’ wet-spore experience didn’t translate to dry stuff, Heine and others say.

this wikipedia article has more details, including another problem: no liver transplant, no autopsy.

now, if you are really paranoid, follow the money: He did it to make money for the pharm company producing anthrax vaccine (he held a patent on one of the vaccines that the gov't pulled out from), or he did it to increase the budget for bioweapons prevention research.

and did he kill himself because they were going to arrest him for murder, or because he knew his kinky sex life would be revealed?